Programming and Other Notes

Today, at 7:00 AM PDT (10:00 AM EDT), the U.S. Census will be releasing its income data for the U.S. population in 2011. While we were on top of that data release last year, releasing our tool modeling the distribution of income for individuals within minutes of that event, this year, we're going to do something a little different, which is going to take a bit more time to develop. We expect to have something interesting posted on that count soon!...

In the meantime, as long as we're on the subject of the income distribution of Americans, we'd like to also note that we still have never been contacted by the incredibly incurious "journalist" Jonathan Chait to discuss our findings that there has been effectively no change in the income inequality for individuals in the U.S. since at least 1994, as he apparently prefers to discuss our work with his uninformed readers and at least one lightweight "academic expert".

Perhaps that's not so surprising after the last go-round, which didn't go so well for Chait, as we raised a number of questions that he has never answered. Or even bothered to ask!

As it happens, a real expert on the topic, Richard Burkhauser, came out with a paper that not only reinforces our findings, but answers many of the questions we raised that could have been asked by Chait, if only he were not such an incredibly incurious journalist! But don't take our word for it - that paper is the subject of this Econtalk podcast from 9 April 2012.

Highly recommended - and not just for the vindication of our findings and the quality of our data sources!